Maryam Amir – If you havent reached your Ramadan Quran goal

I am someone who could never finish the entire Quran in

Ramadan. I always wondered how in the world anybody did it. I would

spend, like, hours and hours trying to read, and as much as I

could, I could never get to a just a day. And it was so defeating,

because I felt like everyone was talking about how much Quran they

were reading, and every day in the masjid, or frequently, I should

say, someone would get on the microphone and talk about how this

is the month of the Quran. If you're not reading at least one

entire Quran a month, you're not doing enough. And it took me many

years to realize that the people who were giving those lectures

were native Arabic speakers, that they could read the Quran because

it was their native language, that it was easy for them to read

quickly because they'd been reading it for decades. And I had

none of those in my background, and so I had to shift what

everyone was saying is the best way to engage with the Quran in

this month to what was realistic for my for my reality. Many times

we speak about the scholars, like Imam as Sheik, I read the Quran 60

times in Ramadan. And you know, the scholars would leave all of

the classes they would teach just to recite as much Quran as

possible, which is incredible. But let's think about two things.

Number one, they were scholars who read the Quran. That was their

job, like now my job. I read the Quran. I do have sort of the

Quran. They knew Arabic, even if they had to learn it because they

weren't native Arabic speakers. By that point, they would have read

the Quran many times in their lives, and that is amazing. It is

an honor. We should all strive to be that way, of course, but

Ramadan for them was like a break from their, you know, typical

scholarly classes that they would do throughout the rest of the

year, and they would just focus invest in recitation. Because, of

course, every single letter is rewarded, and your reward is

massively multiplied in Ramadan. But for many of us who have, you

know, other responsibilities, work, school, family, anything

else. And I'm not saying that they also didn't have those

responsibilities, of course, but like, okay, living in America, for

example, you have so much going on, and many times you don't

understand what you're reading. So Ramadan is a time to reset so that

you can look at what the rest of your year is going to be with the

Quran. So if you are someone who's gotten to this part of Ramadan,

and you are very far away from your Quran goal, reset it to look

at what your you want your Quran goal to be for the rest of the

year. For me, at that point in my life, before I learned Arabic and

memorize Quran, it was I want to know what the Quran is saying to

me. So every single day, I would take a translation of the Quran. I

would read the translation of what they were going to be reciting in

prayer for that night, because I was able, at that time to go for

tadawi every night. But set an amount if you don't understand it

in the translation, if you do understand it, then in your than

in Arabic. If you can read Arabic but don't understand it, do both.

And set a goal, not for just this Ramadan. Set your goal for the

Ramadan of the next five years and the next five years. Do you want

to understand what you are hearing in Salah. Do you want to

understand what you're reading? You're not going to be able to

speak Arabic by doing this. But this is what I did, and it helped

me learn so much Quran that by the time I went to study Arabic, my

teacher was like, how do you know all these words when you can't?

Can't even ask me, how are you in Arabic? She realized it was just

like all the I had read in the translation and listen to with the

translation. So make your goal that from now you are going to try

your best, that by next Ramadan, you're going to understand more.

So every single day, starting now in Ramadan, start reading it in

translation. Start reading it in the Arabic If you can with it.

Listen to it as much as possible. Claudia, the woman Quran reciters

app, is available for you for free to download on Google Play or

Apple Stores. It's women's Quranic recitation, if you'd like to

listen to women, if you're a sister, if you read like five

pages a day of half English, half Arabic a day. And by next Ramadan,

your Quranic connection is going to be completely different.

Inshallah, do today what you want to see in five years for your

relationship with the Quran.